Research Week looks to investigate Pokemon that have potential in Dream World, be it in stats, movepool, or supporting their team, to serve as an innovative choice in today's metagame. These are Pokemon that, for the most part, remain relatively untested. I've selected three Pokemon I feel, with help from everyone else, could see the rise of new and powerful sets, or the fulfilment of a particular niche. Perhaps the title is a bit of a misnomer; in fact, this installment (and likely future ones) of Research Week will continue as long as the discussion does, and that's where you all come in.

If you have anything to say about any of these Pokemon, please post about them! It doesn't matter if you've used them or have just faced them in battle, anything is fine (but please, do try them). Just be sure to back up your posts with good competitive reasoning, such as damage calculations! Posting replays showcasing the pokemon you selected is especially encouraged.

Be open-minded, don't just say something is terrible and walk away; at least look into them and see what options they may be able to utilize!

Feel free to theorymon, but make it clear that you are theorymon'ing. At the end of the week, however, I want discussion to move towards how useful the Pokemon actually are in DW, and what sets are effective on them.

Just because an analysis has been done for a Pokemon doesn't mean there isn't more to explore; it's quite possible that something might have gone unnoticed or is missing.

Do not post in this thread complaining about the Pokemon I choose and/or suggesting ones we should do for future weeks. I want discussion to stay on topic about the three Pokemon we are "researching". Feel free to VM / PM me these suggestions, but don't expect the next research week to have all the Pokemon you suggested, or any of them.

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So, the three Pokemon we will be looking at this research week are Reuniclus, Ditto, and Volcarona.

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How useful are these Pokemon in Dream World? What sets can they run effectively? What gives them trouble? What advantages do they have over other Pokemon? What roles can they fill in teams? Are they worth the team slot on your team or is it outclassed?

Discuss; the discussion that come out of this will surely be illuminating! Don't forget, you're not just limited to this topic to discuss these Pokemon. The #dw irc channel is a perfectly suitable place to discuss them as well. Feel free to take the discussion to #pokemon as well. At the end of the discussion period, hope we can reach a general consensus on how good these Pokemon really are, and that we might find some interesting discoveries.

Alright, now that that's out of the way we can get to the fun part of this. First up, Reasearch Week will now have a duration of roughly two weeks. The reason for this is as follows:

The Research Week Challenge:

Users will use one of the research week mons on their team

The user(s) that have peaked at #1 with a 1500+ rating before the end of the two week period will get temporary status (hops) in #dw

Users will be expected to post their experiences with the pokemon they use, the teams they used, the problems they encoutered while trying to make the said pokemon work.

If a user does not participate in the discussion, they will be passed over.

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The first week of the challenge will be open for initial speculation on how one of the Research Week Pokemon will fare, previous experience with the Pokemon, or even just to say that you will be participating in the ladder challenge and on what alt (mandatory, new alts are required). The second week is where I expect the main discussion to occur and to heat up. This is when you can post battle logs, experiences with your team on the ladder and generally how a Pokemon has worked out for you. A general format while signing-up may look something like this:

Remember, if you are peak at #1 on the ladder before the end of the round with at least a 1500 rating you will get temporary hops in #dw, which can become permanent depending on your track record. (If you already have hops+ we'll work something out) Other possible rewards may include a Custom Title and larger avatar for winning significant amount of RW Challenges. Furthermore, quality posting may be rewarded with the above rewards, even if you did not win the challenge. So get out and post!

IMPORTANT: Dream World OU ladder is getting reset after the 25th, so I highly recommend not laddering before that but if you guys do please provide us with a screenshot of your ranking. If you really want to test the research mons on the ladder before the reset, you guys are most welcome to do that. If one manages to peak #1 during these 2 days time-period, that user must share his team and experiences in this thread to get rewarded.

I think this one is obvious - ditto is pretty much the be all end all revenge killer if offensive teams, since no matter what you do, ditto is faster and can hit you with one of your own attacks. This really causes a lot of mind games if you aren't confident with your setup sweeper, e.g. Mach punch breloom, tail glow manaphy. I guess chandelure is used more though because not only does it have utility versus offense, but it also has a lot of potential versus stall. Ditto sucks against stall, which is honestly probably the only reason why it isn't seen as much as other stuff.

Though moveset-wise it would appear that there is significantly less opportunity for creativity, but that is not the case with ditto. This thing checks so much and opens up so many opportunities for the rest of the team

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Reuniclus is a very underrated threat in today's metagame. Calm Mind sets are viable, but Trick Room Reuniclus really takes the cake in my opinion. It wrecks the faster paced teams in this metagame by turning their agility against them and hits like a hammer. I'm quite pleased to use Reuniclus actually.

Volcarona and Ditto are two tried and tested Pokemon. While Ditto obviously does what it needs to, Volcarona may be a bit tougher to utilize considering the immense popularity of Excadrill. However, it's definitely still a threat, especially behind a Substitute.

I am really surprised how many people are not prepared for Volcarona these days, myself included sometimes. I see so many sun teams that have pretty much no answer to Volcarona at all, meaning you can just come in on one of their utility Pokemon, set up Quiver Dance and 6-0 them right off the bat some times.

After testing Reuniclus, I can confidently say that the Offensive Trick Room variant is the most viable in Dream World. I tried other variants such as the Calm Mind and even Trick sets but I hated the speed of Reuniclus. I found myself luring in Pokemon and Genesect and Chandelure who would either U-Turn out into something else or just straight up OHKO me respectively. I switched to the Trick Room version and have never looked back, it's so good and needs a lot more usage.

Reuniclus has a very good niche in Dream World, the fact that it is one of the few sweepers that does not need to rely on a good speed stat to sweep. Trick Room completely switches the momentum of the match around. Many times has an opponent sent their Genesects or Excadrills in on Reuniclus predicting a Psychic, but instead you Trick Room and then proceed to OHKO them afer hazards. Coupled with hazards, Reuniclus is a very effective late game sweeper especally against the most common variations of Sand Teams. Keldeo, Breloom, Deoxys-S, Excadrill, Tyranitar, Amoonguss, Landorus, Chandelure and Skarmory are all either 2HKO'd by Reuniclus, or OHKO'd after hazards support.

Reuniclus performs very well against the top tier threats, but it does need some support to grant some OHKOs. I personally have been running a more Semi-Stall team built around Reuniclus with Specially Defensive Heatran / Specs Keldeo / Physically Defensive Amoongus / Physically Defensive Skarmory / Scarf Genesect and it's been working really well. Skarmory / Heatran usually always get up Spikes and Stealth Rock in a match, and Keldeo is there to take out the spinners, as Tentacruel and Starmie cannot stay in against Specs Keldeo. Once hazards are up, let something die and send in Reuniclus and it's usually good game there. Nothing really wants to switch in to Reuniclus when hazards are up, perfect coverage means that nothing is safe from Reuniclus. This was helpful against stall teams, with Keldeo supporting Reuniclus they were no trouble. Even higher up the ladder where stall teams were more common, Reuniclus still pulled it's weight. It eats hazards and ignores damage from status, weather and Life Orb. Even the most common spinners in Dream World, namely Excadrill, Tentacruel and Starmie cannot switch in to Reuniclus.

Overall I'm really quite surprised at the lack of Reuniclus usage. On the ladder, I maybe only saw about 2 or 3 in 70 matches. One thing that I think puts people off using Reuniclus is that it is hard to use successfully. People don't want to sacrifice 2 or 3 slots to provide support for Reuniclus. Calm Mind versions lure in the aforementioned threats who all outspeed and can hit Reuniclus hard. It may be hard to fit Reuniclus in on your team, but with the correct support it can single handedly sweep teams.